School Budgets On The Ballot Across New York Tuesday

Empty voting booths stand waiting for New York residents to cast their vote in the US mid-term elections at a polling station at a school in Harlem in New York, November 2, 2010. President Barack Obama's Democrats face a day of reckoning as US voters headed to the polls in an election likely to see Republicans seize control of the House of Representatives and gain broad new powers to attack his agenda. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel Dunand (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)Empty voting booths (credit: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

WEST HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — Taxpayers across New York were headed to the polls Tuesday to vote on whether to support or strike down their local school budgets.

Concerned parent Lisa Frey, who has three sons in the Mineola school district, said she was listening.

“It is the most important thing for people to get out there and vote. Our children are the number one priority,” she said.

Behind the scenes there’s a growing debate over what the vote might mean for a proposed statewide property tax cap. Tuesday’s vote could influence the debate among fiscally conservative voters who are concerned about rising school taxes subsequently driving up property taxes.

“Well you know, the answer can’t always be more money, more money, more money. Can’t be, you can’t have seven percent increases, eight percent increases every year. And by the way, we’ve been spending money we don’t have,” he said.

“I’m for that. I don’t, taxes just keep going up. And there has to be something done to keep it down,” said William Miceli of Mineola.

The situation was especially tenuous on Long Island where Nassau and Suffolk Counties’ school districts were proposing an average tax increase of almost four percent.

In Mineola, a school was closed in order to hold the districts spending increase to just 2.3-percent.

Mineola Superintendent Michael Nagler said there are other costs, from staff salaries and pension obligations that would not be taken into account under the governor’s proposed mandatory spending cap.

“Without some kind of madate relief, you’re going to hurt the program,” he said.

Speaking earlier this school year, Nagler said parents were in a difficult position.

“Our voters are torn. Do we want to be financially and economically sound, or do we want to keep our schools and take a chance that we pass our budget?” he said on October 26 of last year.

Last year, 92-percent of the school budgets passed. This year, an overwhelming majority of the school budgets under consideration are also expected to be approved.